Punish Me

Elsa is a probation officer in her fifties, married, her daughter recently moved out, and one of the people under her supervision is Jan, who is sixteen. He offers, plainly, to submit to her. She is shocked, and then she is not. Angelina Maccarone shot it in black and white and treats the sadomasochism as neither provocation nor spectacle; what sits at the centre is less sex than the question of who holds authority over whom, the adult in the room being the one officially responsible for the boy. German critics praised it for its restraint rather than for what it shows. It won the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present section at Locarno in 2006, and Maren Kroymann was named best actress by the German film critics the following year.